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December 15, 2012

CAYMAN UPDATE: Defiant leader of Cayman Islands under pressure to resign. “Embattled Cayman Islands Premier McKeeva Bush faced growing pressure to resign on Friday after his arrest on suspicion of theft and corruption in the offshore Caribbean financial center. A defiant Bush, who has blamed his troubles on the governor of the British overseas territory, has said since his detention that he did nothing wrong and has no plans to step down.”

BLAME: Obama administration, Congress quietly let school security funds lapse. Well, they needed money for Solyndra.

HELP, I’VE FALLEN AND I CAN’T TESTIFY ABOUT BENGHAZI! “I can only think of 2 reasons why her people would let us hear this story that she fainted, addled her pate, and can’t face up to Congress on Benghazi: 1. She’s not going to run for President, or 2. What she would have to say about Benghazi is more damaging than this effort to avoid testifying.”

A BRIEF HISTORY of the movie camera.

WHY SO FEW DIED AT THE CLACKAMAS MALL SHOOTING: Clackamas Shooter Was Confronted by CCW Holder.

NOTE THAT THIS WAS NOT DEMANDED BY A BOY: Hasbro to meet with girl, 13, on gender-neutral Easy-Bake ovens. Make them available in camo.

UPDATE: Reader Melissa Lambert points out that boys would like this toy grill. But I’m sure that counts as perpetuating gender stereotypes or something.

AT AMAZON, Deals Of The Week, in Movies & TV.

POLITIFACT, WRONG? THERE’S A SHOCK. Mike Riggs: Dear Politifact: Your Analysis of Obama’s Drug War Record Is Factually Wrong.

IS CUSTOMER SERVICE ACTUALLY GETTING BETTER? Or has it just hit rock bottom? My experiences have been good lately, for whatever that’s worth.

PHOTO ESSAY: Poor Little Rich Girls Of Mexico. “There has been a melodramatic pattern of saying these women are evil; they represent corruption; they represent 70 years of PRI rule. …”

MARK SHIELDS HAS NO IDEA WHAT HE’S TALKING ABOUT: “In the United States of America in 2012, it’s easier in many states . . . to buy an automatic weapon than it is to rent an automobile.”

Er, no, it’s not.

He and Rupert Murdoch need to do a little bit of studying before trying to capitalize on this tragedy.

UPDATE: Reader Bruce Goldston snarks: “Why should you need ID to buy a gun when you don’t need ID to vote for the people who want to take away your right to buy a gun?” (Bumped).

SCIENCE: Junk Food Can Make You Dumber. “Eating a high-fructose diet over the long term alters your brain’s ability to learn and remember information.”

INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY: 26 States Decline ObamaCare Exchange; ‘Administrative Nightmare’ Seen.

PREHISTORIC CHEESE: Humans made cheese 7,500 years ago, researchers say.

IN THE MAIL: Second That Emotion: How Decisions, Trends, and Movements Are Shaped.

POLIWOOD: Roger Simon talks about his new play, The Party Line. On YouTube.

HMM: Jovan Belcher shooting triggered by paternity issues?

WALTER RUSSELL MEAD: Arrogant Unilateralist Obama Defies the UN . . . and thank goodness he did.

The U.S., along with Canada, the UK, and a handful of other sensible countries, has walked away from the deranged plan to “occupy the internet” strongly supported by that wonderful thing, the “global community.”

The International Telecommunications Union (“committed to connecting the world”), another innocently named UN bureaucracy with great destructive potential, won’t be a vehicle to strengthen the repressive powers of UN members like China, Iran, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Cuba. . . . Of course, autocracies can still try to control the internet domestically, and they can even try to cooperate with other friendly autocracies. But it appears they won’t be able to leverage the UN to help them do it. Harebrained schemes like taxing international internet traffic, legitimizing government censorship, and putting UN bureaucrats in charge of running the internet have been warded off for now.

This shows that on the issues he cares about President Obama is as much of a cowboy as Ronald Reagan. Indeed, cowboy American unilateralism isn’t confined to the Right. Remember that Ted Kennedy voted against the Kyoto protocol.

Alas, the threat is only halted, not abolished.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG IN THE ATLANTIC: What Can We Do To Stop Massacres?

We must find a way to make it more difficult for the non-adjudicated mentally ill to come into possession of weapons. This is crucially important, but very difficult, because it would require the cooperation of the medical community — of psychiatrists, therapists, school counselors and the like — and the privacy issues (among other issues) are enormous. But: It has to be made more difficult for sociopaths, psychopaths and the violently mentally-ill (who, in total, make up a small portion of the mentally ill population) to buy weapons.

People should have the ability to defend themselves. Mass shootings take many lives in part because no one is firing back at the shooters. The shooters in recent massacres have had many minutes to complete their evil work, while their victims cower under desks or in closets. One response to the tragic reality that we are a gun-saturated country is to understand that law-abiding, well-trained, non-criminal, wholly sane citizens who are screened by the government have a role to play in their own self-defense, and in the defense of others (read The Atlantic article to see how one armed school administrator stopped a mass shooting in Pearl Mississippi). I don’t know anything more than anyone else about the shooting in Connecticut at the moment, but it seems fairly obvious that there was no one at or near the school who could have tried to fight back.